Dave Johnson Reflects on Legendary Broadcasting Career | OneFootball

The longtime voice of DC United, Dave Johnson looks back on some of his favorite moments in the broadcast booth.

It has been over three decades since DC United came into Major League Soccer as one of the original 10 teams, with the Black and Red proceeding to win three of the first four MLS Cups as well as two Supporters’ Shield titles before adding another MLS Cup in 2004.

They haven’t returned to the MLS Cup Final since, and it’s been 12 years since they won their last trophy. The club hasn’t made a playoff appearance since 2019 (mind you, over half the league qualifies for the playoffs), and its last playoff win was in 2014. 2025 was more of the same, as DC United won the MLS Wooden Spoon award for the team with the worst record, with 26 points from 34 matches.

While there have been countless highs and lows for the club since starting its MLS journey in 1996, one thing that has remained a constant is the voice of Dave Johnson. Born and raised in Maryland, Johnson grew up watching the Washington Diplomats and the Washington Bullets — the predecessors of DC United and the Washington Wizards — and quickly became hooked on other sports teams in the nation’s capital. While many of his classmates focused on more traditional American sports, Johnson immediately took a liking to soccer.

“Soccer and the success it’s having now in the USA is not an overnight success story,” said Johnson in an exclusive Urban Pitch interview. “It’s been coming for 50 years, and a lot of work went into that with a lot of people. We’re not having this conversation if it’s not for the original North American Soccer League, which was a well-organized, big-time league that had a contract with ABC in the 1970s that brought Pelé to this country, which probably spurred the soccer boom.”

At 61, Johnson has broadcast just about every single major sport in the Washington, D.C. region, but his first-ever gig was during his childhood in Gambrills, Maryland. In order to soothe the pain of his mother, who had multiple sclerosis, Johnson would cut lineups out of the newspaper and perform imaginary broadcasts.

After his mother passed in 1979, Johnson used sports to pacify his heartbreak, listening to 103.5 WTOP-FM, the commercial all-news radio station licensed to serve Washington, D.C. residents, and traveling with his father to RFK Stadium to watch Johan Cruyff and co. suit up for the Diplomats, of whom they were season ticket holders. After graduating with a degree in mass communications from Towson University, Johnson left Baltimore for Annapolis, where he has remained ever since, and started broadcasting Naval Academy Athletics for the WNAV radio station.

In December 1989, Johnson applied for his dream job at WTOP and got it, spending three years with their sports radio program before departing, eventually returning in 1995 and remaining for another 27 years. By 1997, Johnson was the full-time play-by-play broadcaster for the Washington Wizards and DC United, and he’d fill in for other sports from hockey, to baseball, to lacrosse.

By All-Pro Reels from District of Columbia, USA – CC BY-SA 2.0

“My two full-time gigs have been the Wizards and DC United. DC United was first professional sports team that I was the voice of, but I don’t know if I’d say it was my first big break,” Johnson said. “Before that, I had done college soccer and other TV shows for Home Team Sports since 1992.

“I’m grateful that I had the chance to live out a dream and be a part of the soccer team in my city. As I was growing up and falling in love with soccer, I always said that if I had a chance to make a difference or impact the sport, or help to promote it, that would be great, and this gave me that opportunity.”

Forty years after his mother’s untimely passing, Johnson was himself diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He decided to collaborate with the National MS Society to raise funds and awareness to find a cure for MS by producing the “It’s In the Net” charity jersey, paying homage to Johnson’s iconic call for DC United’s goals, with a portion of the proceeds being donated to the National MS Society and going towards his fundraising efforts for the “Bike MS: Nation’s Capital” bike ride in Reston, VA.

“Multiple sclerosis wants to bring you down, and so you just fight, that’s it,” stated Johnson to RG. “Everyone has some fight that they’re carrying every day, so this is my fight. Every time that I travel, every time that I broadcast, it’s my way of saying, ‘You’re not gonna beat me on this…I’m still going.’ MS impacts each person differently; it’s a very unpredictable disease, but the bottom line is you just deal with it.”

Despite retiring from WTOP in 2022 and ending his legendary tenure as DC United’s play-by-play commentator following Apple TV’s 10-year, $2.5 billion global broadcast agreement, Johnson has remained an active presence in the D.C. sports world. He is still a regular at DC United home matches, where his signature call, “It’s in the net!” is immortalized in the Dave Johnson Broadcasting Booth at Audi Field. And while he’s no longer on the TV broadcasts, he’s still doing play-by-play on the radio for the Black and Red.

“It’s not a soccer thing, it’s an industry-wide thing,” says Johnson of the Apple TV deal. “You look at all the regional sports networks that have either gone into bankruptcy, or in the case of the Wizards and Capitals, who literally brought their rights back into their own control. Once upon a time, not long ago, the hope was for local stations to get a rights check from the baseball team or whoever. MLS had national TV contracts where 90% of the games had to be televised regionally, just like NHL and NBA, because of the size of the schedule. It’s not like the NFL where you only have 17 games.

“Unfortunately, MLS teams were never able to consistently, or if ever, get a rights fee, so one of their biggest expenses was actually local television. MLS was in a situation where a streaming service like Apple TV became available. Now there’s more options and the barrier to entry is gone. Before all these streaming services, if you were a local team, there was typically one local, regional sports network in your market. If you didn’t get on that, then you weren’t on television. If there weren’t so many barriers to entry in the old NASL, that league probably would still be around. It was purely a case of, ‘If MLS was going to grow, it needed a better income stream from television.

“Fans always say, ‘Spend more money and buy more players,’ but the money’s got to come from somewhere. I’m not one of the Apple announcers, but I totally understand why Major League Soccer had to find a different solution. The negative is that if you’re not a subscriber to Apple TV, then you’re not being exposed to Major League Soccer. So that’s what we hope with DC United Radio. We still have a local connection, and we can still promote and provide that connection. If we were on a different network, maybe we’d get more exposure, but there’s an economic factor involved.”

Rather than allowing MS to slow him down, he’s still building onto his legacy and traveling the country as the radio voice of the Wizards. We caught up with Johnson about his journey in sports.

Urban Pitch: What’s your favorite DC United moment?

Dave Johnson: That’s a tough question, but opening Audi Field was special. We had Wayne Rooney playing for us at the time. It was painful to see everyone else get a stadium besides us. All that we did as supporters to reach a point where we had a stadium of our own and finally get it done, that’s where Jason Levien and the ownership should be credited. The reality is, if the stadium hadn’t gotten done, D.C. would’ve become like the original San Jose team and moved, because RFK was no longer a tenable stadium.

There was that special night where we won a playoff match to secure our spot in a third straight MLS Cup Final, I always remember that feeling. It was a Wednesday night but there was a big crowd of columnists like Michael Wilbon in the press box. For a young team in a young league, that was the moment you felt, “Wow, we really have arrived and are making an impact in the Washington, D.C. area.” There’s so many great memories, and I’ll always remember Lewis Neal securing us a playoff spot in 2012, because that was such a relief after a few rough years.

Photo by Larry French/Getty Images

Who’s the GOAT DC United player?

That’s another hard question. Needless to say, we’ve had so many amazing players. There’s a special place in my heart for Marco Etcheverry and what he could do with that wonderful left foot. But what Jaime Moreno did as a young player coming from Europe, whereas at the time MLS was typically more for players at the end of their careers….he not only changed the dynamic of DC United, but was one of the first superstars of the league.

Who’s the GOAT Washington, D.C. athlete?

I grew up in the area, I’ve been following D.C. teams ever since I was kid, and I’ve been in the industry for 35 years. I’ve seen a lot of great players, but I think you have to give it to Alex Ovechkin for what he’s accomplished. He’s won a championship, he’s the greatest goal scorer ever in hockey…sometimes I don’t know if we appreciate him as much as he should. I would have to put him as the greatest.

What’s your favorite place to eat in D.C.?

I like The Capital Grille a lot.

Who’s the GOAT sports commentator?

Because of my career trajectory, I will say Jim Karvellas. He was the voice of the Bullets and then became the voice of the New York Cosmos and Knicks. To some degree, he was the voice of soccer. He was doing the Cosmos, which was the main team from the ’70s, he was doing network broadcasts of the MISL, so as a young person growing up and aspiring to do what I am doing now, he certainly resonated with me.

Lastly, who’d fare better: an MLS player in an NBA game, or an NBA player in an MLS game?

That’s a hard question, because you need good footwork in both. But if you’re talking about NBA and MLS players, anybody who’s a professional athlete in any sport will figure it out and compete. Those players are so competitive and want to reach the highest level. I don’t know who would do better, because they are different sports, and height is a lot more important in basketball, but I don’t think they’d embarrass themselves in either scenario.